“Students rearrange their personal and domestic lives to get here. The camaraderie, the sense of community that I see on a daily basis is amazing and makes the program stronger,” said Christopher D'Ambrese, director of adult and continuing education.

As one of 37 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services throughout the state, Rockland BOCES provides career and technical education, special education, adult education and other services. Roughly half its 6,000 adult students take courses in English as a second language and high school equivalency (test assessing secondary completion) preparation.

Subsidized by the state, it is affordable and convenient to working parents. The program is based in West Nyack but has satellite locations in Nyack, Spring Valley, Haverstraw and Suffern. A large group of adults takes evening ESL and TASC preparation classes at Spring Valley High school.

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Pat Salerno teaches an ESL class at the Rockland BOCES Educational Resource Center in Nyack, where immigrants and an increasing number of Hasidic Jews learn English.(Photo11: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)

“Our tagline is ‘rooted in the community’ because we’re accessible to pretty much anyone in the county,” said BOCES spokeswoman Stephanie Gouss.

“The overwhelming majority of students pay us in 10 one-dollar bills.”

Thomas Della Torre, RCC’s associate vice president for academic and community partnerships

Most of the students are immigrants from roughly 70 countries, the majority from Haiti and Latin America. Former Adult Education Director Albert Moschetti, who retired in July, said some 40 to 50 ultra-Orthodox Jewish students have attended the program in recent years, mainly young men.

Moschetti said BOCES' outreach to the Orthodox community had begun showing results about eight years ago and enrollment increased as word spread.

For $10 per semester, roughly 600 diploma-seekers with more advanced skills take advanced ESL and TASC classes through a partnership with Rockland Community College. The need is great.

“The overwhelming majority of students pay us in 10 one-dollar bills,” said Thomas Della Torre, RCC’s associate vice president for academic and community partnerships.

RCC instructors teach the courses, many of them on the college’s Suffern campus, which helps familiarize students with a collegiate environment and expectations.

“We do have students from the Hasidic community who, although they’ve lived here their whole lives, speak very little English. But these are highly educated people who’ve had rigorous studies,” Della Torre said, noting that they often advance faster than peers who've had less formal education.